Another example of the difficulties of taxation in the Highlands in those times is afforded by a letter addressed, at Ruthven in August 1697, to some unknown person by twenty-five Strathspey gentlemen, remonstrating against a claim for gratuitous coal and candle. The principal persons here concerned were William M‘Intosh of Borlum, A. M‘Pherson of Killiehuntly, Alexander M‘Pherson of Phones, J. M‘Pherson of Benchar, J. Gordon in Kingussie, and William M‘Pherson of Nuid. They say: ‘We understand by Borlum, our bailie, that you desire to know this day our resolutions anent the furnishing you coal and candle without payment. You know very weel how heavy that burden has lyen upon us, and that it has so exhausted us, that much of our country is wasted, and therefore we do assure you by these that we will not advance you any more coal and candle without pay, because there is no law for it, and you may as well take away all our property by force and violence, as impose upon us any taxes arbitrary without authority or law. Property and liberty is [Sidenote: 1694.] the thing we contend for against arbitrary power, and resolves to adhere to the act of Council and secretary’s letter in our favours, as the final resolutions of,’ &c.[119] It is a great pity that we have not the name of the party addressed; but it may be suspected that it was that of a feudal superior, probably the Duke of Gordon. The language about liberty and property must have sounded strange in such ears from a set of Strathspey vassals. [Sidenote: MAR. 24.] Mr John Dysart was inducted as minister of the parish of Coldingham, in place of the previous Episcopalian minister, Mr Alexander Douglas, who retired with a considerable number of the parishioners to worship in a barn near the church. Dysart, a man of strenuous opinions and great resoluteness of character, was determined to carry out the Presbyterian discipline with vigour. He caused a deputation to go to Mr Douglas and demand the pulpit Bible, communion-cups, baptismal-basin, the boxes for the collection or offertory, and the box for the communion-cloth and mortcloth [pall for funerals]; but Douglas seems to have considered himself entitled to retain most of these articles as private property, and only surrendered the box for the mortcloth. The existence of the dissenting body headed by this gentleman afterwards proved very troublesome to Mr Dysart, as it interfered sadly with that moral sway which he, as a properly constituted Presbyterian clergyman, and he alone, was entitled to exercise.